Xaverian student aces SATs

It’s perfection for this modest Xaverian junior.

Michael Darby, 16, scored a 2400 on his SAT exam, making him one of the 360 students who took the college admissions test in 2012 to receive the highest possible score. That puts him in the 99.98^th percentile out of the 1,664,479 students that took the test last year.

“It wasn’t fun by any measure,” said the well-spoken Staten Islander on a warm spring day inside Xaverian High School, of the test. “I thought I bombed it.”

Darby prepared for the test by taking classes with TestTakers, totaling about 60 hours of work. He said he simply followed what they told him to do and did not spend any extra time preparing for the exam which can be a make-or-break for students applying to college.

When Darby received the score, he was “a little surprised to say the least. It took a while to process before I told my parents,” he recalled. “I had to keep looking at the computer screen to make sure that I saw it right.”

With such a great accomplishment, Darby said that he is looking at applying to Ivy League schools such as Princeton University, Brown University and Columbia University. He does not know what field he will go into, but he said he enjoys math and science.

Darby said he is a “good student” who is involved in plenty of extracurricular activities at Xaverian, including Xaverian Dramatics, the Young Democrats Club, Model of the U.N., the Clippers Society and student government.

In his free time, he “reads, plays video games and hangs out with friends,” Darby said.

He is a voracious reader. Darby likes sci-fi, fantasy books or “anything not non-fiction,” he told The Home Reporter.

Darby has simple advice for those preparing to take the SATs: “Study hard and work hard,” he said.